Hiroshi Yoshida- Japanese Woodcut

Found this lovely postcard of Hiroshi Yoshida's woodcut "Kameido Bridge" from 1927 from a darling new little shop down in Echo Park (in Los Angeles) named Stories , which carries a wonderful selection of books, postcards, random little gifts, and has a small cafe inside.

Seriously cute little bookshop with a great selection of used and new books- I could have walked away with many armfuls of great reference/inspiration books that I'd just use to post to this blog all day, plus they had such a great selection of collections of short stories and just nice random LA stuff (cute retro dish towels, day of the dead stuff, etc). They do poetry readings and lots of events there too!

http://www.storiesla.com/

Anyway, I couldn't not buy this postcard because it was so beautiful- the colors, art deco architecture in the bridge, and delicate linework are just wonderful! Enjoy!

Mary Blair

Of course, what self respecting animator-colorist can go without admiring the mad skills of the ever talented Mary Blair?

For those of you who don't know her, you should for many, many reasons. In a nutshell, she was a highly influential female artist who worked for Walt Disney on both legendary films and rides, as well as a prolific illustrator and artist of the mid 20th century.

These are just a small sampling of some of her pieces that I love. I really dig her color sense, the way she understands composition, and the way she handles simplifying shapes and forms.  I also love the rough texture that shows through the simple shapes via the tempura paint medium.

Images graciously from Cartoon Modern and a wonderful collection of her images over on Flickr. There are also two illustrated books over on Amazon of her concept art from Alice in Wonderland and Cinderella.